COVID outbreak hits Raleigh jail, as cases and positive tests rise in NC

Wake County has a new COVID-19 outbreak at one of its jails in Raleigh, officials said Wednesday.

It’s the second outbreak at the Wake County Detention Center on Hammond Road, which first saw 21 detainees test positive for the virus last August. That outbreak lasted until June 15, Wake County spokeswoman Stacy Beard said.

Tonya Mingia, a health services administrator at the detention center, said two staff members have tested positive in the current outbreak.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services defines an outbreak as two or more staff or residents testing positive.

Both staff members were detention officers, Sheriff Gerald Baker said. Mingia said they were not vaccinated.

No other positive tests have been detected, she added.

The detention center is one of two jails in the county, along with the Wake County Public Safety Center in downtown Raleigh. Together, the facilities have 1,568 beds and employ 425 full and part-time staff.

As of early Wednesday morning, there were 795 detainees being held at the Hammond Road jail and 356 at the downtown jail, according to Wake County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Eric Curry.

He said all new detainees are brought into the detention center. From there, staff move those who have been vaccinated and do not have symptoms of the virus into the general population, while all others are placed in single cells for a 14-day quarantine.

In January, there were 56 COVID-19 cases among detainees at the downtown jail and 43 at the detention center on Hammond Road, The News & Observer previously reported. Seventeen staff members also tested positive.

Officials were unable to say Wednesday how many at the facility were partially or fully vaccinated against the virus, but Curry said they continue to vaccinate any detainees who ask to be vaccinated.

Mingia said while daily testing has continued for those coming into the jail, the general population has not been tested since the outbreak began. But she said the two officers who tested positive were out of work prior to testing positive, and did not interact with those at the jail.

She was unable to say how long they had been out of work.

Curry said that since March of 2020, neither Wake jail has had a COVID-19 related death.

Other COVID outbreaks in Wake, NC

There were three other reported COVID-19 outbreaks in Wake County as of Tuesday, a DHHS report showed. One was in a nursing home, and two were in residential care facilities.

Ten other correctional facilities around the state also had outbreaks as of Tuesday.

The Durham County Detention Facility saw its own outbreak end this week after at least three staff members and one resident at the downtown jail had tested positive for the virus, according to the report.

NC COVID cases rising

The outbreaks come as North Carolina experiences an uptick in new cases of the virus. The percentage of tests coming back positive has steadily risen this month, according to DHHS data.

Health officials in the state have also said the more contagious delta variant is rapidly spreading, The N&O reported.

As of Tuesday, 59% of adults in the state were at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19, while 56% were fully protected.

For the United States as a whole, those figures jump to 67.7% and 58.9% respectively, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This story was originally published July 14, 2021 at 1:38 PM.